New Museum Curators to Fly Around the World

The New Museum sure is doing well in the fundraising department. In today’s email blast, we learned that they received a $500,000 grant from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create a new Research Fellow position and launch a series of seminars on contemporary art. No word on what else they’ll be spending the money on, but we’d like to see more opportunities than the one additional job the New Mu has squeezed out of its $500,000 gift.

And in the department of jaw-dropping, we’ve learned that the museum has secured $300,000 to fly their curators around the world in search of art. The New Museum has named this pile of money the “MX Curatorial Travel Fund”, which was established in honor of Massimiliano Gioni by a group of trustees. All hail Gioni? Basically, the New Museum gave itself a bunch of money and emailed us about it. And because we hate our readers, we’re spreading the news.

But here’s a bit of good news to soften our abuse: The New Museum has relaunched a series of textbooks on contemporary art with MIT that was initiated in 1984 and active until 2004. The first volume released will be Mass Effect: Art and the Internet in the Twenty-First Century, coedited by Lauren Cornell and Ed Halter. Given our focus on art and the internet, it may not be surprising that we’re looking forward to reading the book.